COLU @ CONCEPTS

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump defiantly blamed “both sides” for the weekend violence between white supremacists and counterdemonstrators in Virginia, seeking to rebuff the widespread criticism of his handling of the emotionally-charged protests while showing sympathy for the fringe group’s efforts to preserve Confederate monuments. In doing so, Trump used the bullhorn of the presidency to give voice to the grievances of white nationalists, and aired some of his own. His remarks Tuesday amounted to a rejection of the Republicans, business leaders and White House advisers who earlier this week had pushed the president to more forcefully and specifically condemn the KKK members, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who took to the streets of Charlottesville. The angry exchange with reporters at his skyscraper hotel in New York City laid bare a reality of the Trump presidency: Trump cannot be managed by others or steered away from damaging political land mines. His top aide...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — About 1,000 mourners gathered inside a theater in downtown Charlottesville to remember a woman killed during a violent weekend rally were able to mourn her death Wednesday quietly without the presence of neo-Nazis who had threatened to attend the service for Heather Heyer. Heyer’s grandfather said his 32-year-old granddaughter always wanted fairness, even from a young age. Elwood Shrader said at a memorial service for Heather Heyer that she showed her passion for equality at an early age and swiftly called out something that wasn’t right. He told about 1,000 mourners gathered inside a theater in Charlottesville that she wanted respect for everyone and believed all lives matter. Mark Heyer, her father, began speaking to the audience by saying no father should have to bury his child. He said his daughter wanted to “put down hate.” The service Heyer was held at the theater in downtown Charlottesville, the sight of the deadly rally on Saturday. ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — It started with threats, taunting and racial slurs, and escalated to total pandemonium — hand-to-hand combat in the streets of Charlottesville. White nationalists and counterdemonstrators threw punches, screamed, set off smoke bombs. They hurled water bottles, balloons of paint, containers full of urine. They unleashed chemical sprays. Some waved Confederate flags. Others burned them. I watched, notebook in hand, as people gasped for breath and clutched at their swollen eyes, burning from pepper spray or mace. And for more than an hour — as I roamed what looked like a battle scene, along with AP photographer Steve Helber — authorities mostly watched from the fringes. The weekend violence in Charlottesville unfolded downtown on the edge of Emancipation Park, where the Confederate monument that ostensibly started it all stands. White nationalists, angry that the city plans to remove a towering Robert E. Lee statue, had a permit to hold a noon ...

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Fatmata Kamara had just stepped outside her house before dawn Monday when she saw the muddy hillside collapsing above her. The only thing she could do was run. She was one of the survivors, those who managed to escape the surging mudslides and floodwaters in and around Sierra Leone’s capital that killed more than 300 people, many of them trapped as they slept. Another 600 people are missing, the Red Cross said Tuesday, and the death toll is expected to rise. Thousands lost their homes in the disaster, which was triggered by heavy rains. “I ran away from the house, leaving behind my family,” a grieving Kamara told The Associated Press. “I am the only one that has survived, as my house and dozens of others were covered with mud and boulders.” Rescuers dug with their bare hands through the thick, reddish mud to try to find any survivors in the debris of the homes. Heavy equipment was later brought in, said government spokesman Cornelius Devea...

BADOUSH, Iraq (AP) — Thousands of Iraqis have fled an Islamic State-held town west of Mosul as Iraqi and coalition warplanes step up strikes ahead of a ground offensive to drive out the militants. Tal Afar and the surrounding area is one of the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in July in Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. The town, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the Syrian border, sits along a major road that was once a key IS supply route. On Monday, hundreds of exhausted civilians were brought by Iraqi army trucks from the front line to a humanitarian collection point just west of Mosul. Many described a harrowing journey of a day or more from Tal Afar, with no food or water. Jassem Aziz Tabo, an elderly man who arrived with his 12-member family, said he had left Tal Afar months ago and gone to a village on the outskirts to escape hunger, airstrikes and violence from the militants. “Those who tried to escape were captur...

NEW YORK (AP) — Maria Sharapova was granted a wild-card invitation for the U.S. Open’s main draw on Tuesday and will take part in a Grand Slam event for the first time in more than 1½ years. Sharapova is among eight women given entry into the 128-player field by the U.S. Tennis Association — and by far the most noteworthy. The former No. 1-ranked player and owner of five major titles, including the 2006 U.S. Open, has not entered a major tournament since the Australian Open in January 2016, when she tested positive for the newly banned drug meldonium. That led to a 15-month doping ban, which expired in April. She returned to the tour, but her ranking — currently 148th — was too low to allow entry into major tournaments, and the French Open denied her a wild card. Sharapova planned to try to qualify for Wimbledon, but the 30-year-old Russian wound up skipping the grass-court portion of the season because of an injured left thigh. The USTA didn’t consider her suspension in a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Samwell Tarly knows more than the maesters of the Citadel. Littlefinger knows more than Arya. And Bran knows more than anyone in “Game of Thrones.” The imbalance in knowledge is what economists call “asymmetric information” — when one party in a transaction knows more than the other and can exploit the advantage. It can be bad for economies. And it’s certainly bad for the people of Westeros as the threat of Whitewalkers drew closer in the seventh season’s fifth episode, Eastwatch. The episode ended with Jon Snow leading six others beyond the Wall. They’re on a possible suicide mission to capture a wight — a re-animated corpse controlled by the Whitewalkers. Why? Because of the imbalance of the knowledge, the group hopes to prove that the threat is real to Queen Cersei in order to unite Westeros’ warring factions against a common and demonic enemy. Little do they know that Cersei is already prepared to call a truce, providing only more evidence about the chall...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A lawsuit claims a suburban Philadelphia woman got an extra topping on her Chick-fil-A sandwich: a dead rodent. Ellen Manfalouti sued in Bucks County Court over the tiny rodent she claims was baked into the bottom bun of her chicken sandwich. A co-worker picked up the sandwich for her at a Langhorne restaurant in November, and the two started to eat in a conference room at the insurance agency where they work. “I felt something funny on the bottom of the bun,” Manfalouti told The Philadelphia Inquirer ( http://bit.ly/2vDnJvu)  on Monday. “I turned it over. I said to (my co-worker), ‘They burned my roll really bad.’” Her co-worker, Cara Phelan, said that as soon as Manfalouti threw the sandwich on the table, “I realized it was a small rodent of some sort. I could see the whiskers and the tail.” Manfalouti’s lawyer Bill Davis told the newspaper that he filed the lawsuit last week against Chick-fil-A franchise owner Dave Heffernan and the store after...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lightning — once one of nature’s biggest killers —is claiming far fewer lives in the United States, mostly because we’ve learned to get out of the way. In the 1940s, when there were fewer people, lightning  killed  more than 300 people annually. So far this year, 13 people have died after being struck, on pace for a record low of 17 deaths. Taking the growing population into account, the lightning death rate has shrunk more than forty-fold since record-keeping began in 1940. People seem to be capturing the phenomenon more on camera than before, making it seem like something new and sizzling is going on in the air. Separate videos last month of a Florida lifeguard and an airport worker being hit by lightning went viral. Both survived. Lightning strikes have not changed — they hit about the same amount as they used to, said Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor Paul Markowski. A big difference: Fewer of us are outside during bad weath...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — If, after all the fanfare, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doesn’t actually launch missiles toward Guam, many may write the whole episode off as another of the North’s seemingly endless bluffs. But from Pyongyang’s perspective and in the eyes of some U.S. military experts, Kim and his generals have already won this round. Launch or not, Pyongyang has caused great drama and angst, riled U.S. President Donald Trump and alarmed America’s allies in Tokyo and Seoul. It could also set a precedent for more aggressive brinkmanship ahead. It comes as no surprise then that on Tuesday, as North Korea’s state media released photos of Kim and his military officers examining the launch plan, replete with photos of the missiles’ flight path and a big satellite image of the U.S. territory’s Andersen Air Force Base, it also offered a seeming out. Kim, it said, wants to “watch a little more” before making a decision. The North’s plan is to launch four missiles into...

BEIJING (AP) — China criticized President Donald Trump’s order for a possible U.S. trade investigation of Beijing’s technology policies as a violation of global rules and said Tuesday it will “resolutely safeguard” Chinese interests. Trade groups for technology companies welcomed Trump’s order Monday but the Chinese Commerce Ministry said it violated the spirit of international trade and Washington’s World Trade Organization commitments. The ministry said Beijing will take “all appropriate measures” if Chinese companies are hurt but gave no details. Trump told U.S. trade officials to look into whether to launch a formal investigation into whether Beijing improperly requires foreign companies to hand over technology in exchange for market access. “If the U.S. side disregards the fact it does not respect multilateral trade rules and takes action to damage the economic and trade relations between the two sides, then the Chinese side will never sit back and will take all appropr...

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump defiantly blamed “both sides” for the weekend violence between white supremacists and counter-demonstrators in Virginia, seeking to rebuff the widespread criticism of his handling of the emotionally-charged protests while showing sympathy for the fringe group’s efforts to preserve Confederate monuments. In doing so, Trump used the bullhorn of the presidency to give voice to the grievances of white nationalists, and aired some of his own. His remarks Tuesday amounted to a rejection of the Republicans, business leaders and White House advisers who earlier this week had pushed the president to more forcefully and specifically condemn the KKK members, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who took to the streets of Charlottesville. The angry exchange with reporters at his skyscraper hotel in New York City laid bare a reality of the Trump presidency: Trump cannot be managed by others or steered away from damaging political land mines. His top aides...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Mourners will gather in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Wednesday to honor the woman who was killed when a car rammed into a crowd of people protesting a white nationalist rally that descended into violence last weekend. A memorial service for Heather Heyer is scheduled Wednesday morning at a downtown Charlottesville theater. Attendees were asked to wear purple, Heyer’s favorite color, in her memory. The 32-year-old was a Charlottesville resident and legal assistant whose mother described her daughter as a courageous, principled woman and firm believer in justice and equality. Heyer was among the hundreds of protesters who had gathered Saturday in Charlottesville to decry what was believed to be the largest gathering of white supremacists in a decade — including neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members. They descended on the city for a rally prompted by the city’s decision to remove a Confederate monument. Chaos and violence erupted before th...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was twice removed from his judicial duties, forced a primary runoff Tuesday against Trump-backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in a race likely to be closely watched for clues about Republicans’ prospects in 2018 midterm elections. Despite being buoyed by millions of dollars in advertising by a super political action committee tied to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Strange was unable to defeat the firebrand jurist who took losing stands for the public display of the Ten Commandments and against gay marriage. Moore told cheering supporters that they had sent a great message to Washington, D.C., in a race where Moore presented himself as the better carrier of Trump’s outsider appeal. “This is a great victory. The attempt by the silk stocking Washington elitists to control the vote of the people of Alabama has failed,” Moore said at his victory party in downtown Montgomery, with a copy of the Ten Comma...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah mayor overcame nearly $1 million in attacks from out-of-state groups to win a three-way Republican primary in a race to fill a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives vacated by Jason Chaffetz. Tuesday’s win puts Provo Mayor John Curtis on an easy path toward victory in the November special election. Republicans outnumber Democrats 5-to-1 in Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. Chaffetz represented the district until he abruptly resigned in June, citing a desire to spend more time with family. Utah’s special election is one of seven this year to fill vacancies in the U.S. House and Senate, five of which opened up when elected officials took posts in President Donald Trump’s administration. Chaffetz, a five-term Republican, carved out a reputation for using the House Oversight committee he chaired to run aggressive investigations of Hillary Clinton before the 2016 presidential elections. He’s since taken a role as a Fox News commentator. His dep...